N INETEEN SEVEN- TY-THREE. The doctor and his wife were in New York for a conference. I went to meet them at a shabby, depressing hotel in the West Seventies where Europeans who are not rich often stay. They were like two wool- len dolls, and I could not decide whether the Frenchwoman had grown to the SIze of the Dutchman or whether he had, with a cour- teous condescension, simply inclined down- ward to the size of his little French wife. She was still wear- ing her black berets, and her fingernaiJs shone with a wine-colored polish. She spoke in tongues: Dutch, German, F rench, and English, as if choosing cakes from a tray. Dr. Z met a mild New York winter day clothed in Siberian layers. He was wearing a heavy black overcoat, a woollen vest, a dark-gray sweater, and when he sat down in the waiting room off the lobby gray wInter underwear appeared above his socks He talked: he told the Amsterdam gossip, he spoke of his work, of the fearful cost of things, of hippies in V ondel Park. Madame Z smoked cigarettes and coughed. They were studying the map of the city, looking for subway an d bus lines. The outstanding difficulties of thrift in New York bewildered them, and they sat there as if pulled down into the mud of a dismaying displace- ment, the confusion that afflicts un- fashionable, elderly foreigners when they visit Amenca. They who had been everywhere, from Djakarta to Tokyo to India and every country in Europe. Dr Z smiled and bowed and dashed THE NE.WYORKER old mother in the coun- try. Simone died. It turned out that she had done more than a doz- en portraits of Dr. Z, and one was sold to an American museum for a fair price. In it Dr. Z is seen in a white jack- et, and there are in- struments of his profes- sion about him. On the wall not one but three stylized skeletons are dangling from hooks. --c: Z- --. L- 41 -- :::.- CC.llccording to the 'Times,' I'm 'superb.'" . . about looking for chairs and a quiet corner. In fact, he seemed to be grop- ing In the N ew York air for the sup- ports of his life in Amsterdam, for hIS weathered little house on the Amstel, with his office on the first floor and the rooms above with the old patterned carpets, the comfort of the hideous ab- stract paintings given by patients, ab- stractions that covered the walls next to the stairs like so many colored water spots left over from an old leak. Where is my life? he seemed to be saying. My plates of pickled mussels, the slices of cheese, the tumblers of lemon gin? Still, importance flickered in his eyes-his olive eyes still shining with the oil of remembered vanity and threatenIng to water with the tears of all he had learned and forgotten in his long life. We In Holland were the first to do certain important blood studies, he said. I no longer have my laboratory at the hospital, but I keep up with the devel- opments In my field. How can one not? A life's work. We in Holland kept appearing in his con versation The vastness of the skies they had flown over and the large abyss into which they had fallen on the ground made him caIJ forth hIs coun- try-like an ambassador, one who stands for the whole. You remember that he was well known there, his wife said without any special inflection. Oh, I know I know. I remember well the well-known Dr. Z. Enough of that, he said. Edam cheese is better known than any Dutchman. That it is well to recall also. As it got to be near six o'clock, 1 asked if they wanted to go to a nearby Irish saloon for a drink. The Doctor drew back with a frightened look, but his wife took up the suggestion vehe- mently. Indeed, yes, she would like a drink, she said with a peculiar insistence and defiance. We sat in a dark booth, and Ma- dame Z ordered a Martini An Ameri- can MartInI, she said twice The Doc- tor crumpled and sagged over a beer- Heineken's. Supporting home industries, his wife said Suddenly in the gloom, Madame Z began her lilting harangue, all of it pounng forth with an appalling ener-